Origin Story

Q&A with Will Stripp, creator of Jappi Jalapeño

Why grow jalapeños in the first place?

Because I like hot food. And we’re in New Mexico, and this is a difficult environment to grow hot things—we're in the north, about 7,200 feet up. But I like chiles. So I started growing jalapeños.

My wife, Pam and I were doing different chile recipes, and I came up with these sweet-hot slices which are basically half-sliced jalapeños, handcrafted, and steamed in a syrup of cane sugar and secret spices.

People, when they tasted them, said: “We really want to buy this.” They wanted me to sell it to them. Many people pass through here! And I wound up sending this stuff to Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, California. People were just demanding it!

Tell us about the garden

We’re up in sand and clay fields, enriched by the New Mexico sun and tucked between red and white striped mesas.

The garden has no pesticides - it’s all natural soil.

The garden is called the Paul Davis Memorial Garden. Paul was my father-in-law. He lived here all his life. A solid, funny, kind man - the kind of person you could rely on. When he had the garden, it wasn’t just chiles—it was corn, tomatoes, squash and a lot more. When he stopped gardening, I kept it going with the jalapeños.

What do the jalapeños see as they grow?

The sun. The blue sky. Rainbows, cloud cover, piñon trees, sagebrush, chamisa. They’re fed by water from Ramah Lake, runoff from the Zuni Mountains. Plus well water from a clean aquifer.